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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: today is going to be part two of a two

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Speaker 1: part episode about the aquatic Humanoid. Now, last time, we

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Speaker 1: really focused on the mythology and cultural beliefs about our

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Speaker 1: aquatic counterparts, the humanoid types who live in the depths

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Speaker 1: and there. This is a trope all throughout fiction. You

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Speaker 1: find it in u in all kinds of human cultures.

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Speaker 1: But one thing I think we didn't discuss last time,

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Speaker 1: or if we did, it's my memory is not serving

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Speaker 1: me well. Is the movie Leviathans. Oh. Yes, one of

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Speaker 1: the one of the several nineteen eighty nine underwater Peril

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Speaker 1: movies that that we keep chatting about, and at least

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Speaker 1: in a previous episode. I'm not sure if we we

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Speaker 1: talked about it in The Aquatic Humanoids Part one or not.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about it so much recently I can't even

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Speaker 1: recall when it happened. But anyway, Yeah, so nine you

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Speaker 1: had James Cameron's The Abyss, but you also had Deep

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Speaker 1: Star six Leviathan, Lords of the deep for some reason,

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Speaker 1: everybody went nuts making underwater sci fi movies. Yeah, we've been,

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Speaker 1: so I'm just trying to piece together in a casual

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Speaker 1: way why that was, you know what what was happening

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Speaker 1: in the world. Was it I did have to do

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Speaker 1: with the with recent underwater exploration that really inspired everybody

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Speaker 1: at the same time, or did everyone just know that

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Speaker 1: the abyss was coming and it made sense for all

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Speaker 1: the various cinematic lamp preyests to converge upon it. Now,

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Speaker 1: Leviathan is a I think you'll back me up here,

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Speaker 1: a terrible movie, but a great terrible movie. It is. Ah,

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Speaker 1: it is a thoroughly enjoyable, flawed film. It's the that's

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Speaker 1: the type of bad movie that I just really eat

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Speaker 1: up that ends up in I think inspiring me more

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Speaker 1: than good underwater movies. Yeah, it's such an alien rip off.

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Speaker 1: The DVD I had of it it actually said, is

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Speaker 1: alien underwater? That's the whole quote. Yeah, it is highly derivative,

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Speaker 1: but it god that the cast is so good and

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Speaker 1: the look of the film like it has a Stan

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Speaker 1: Winston Studios monster in it, so you know that's gonna

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Speaker 1: look like a million bucks, and the the the overall

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Speaker 1: sets that are used, especially the interior sets for this

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Speaker 1: underwater station, are tremendous. Like the set does as much

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Speaker 1: as the cast does, really to create a sense of

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Speaker 1: backstory for these characters. You know, in a way, the

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Speaker 1: sleaziness of Daniel Stearns performance in the movie is kind

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Speaker 1: of a set in its own. It's like a landscape

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Speaker 1: of sleez and obnoxiousness. Yeah, he plays this sleazy character

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Speaker 1: named six Pack, I believe, and it's easy to think

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Speaker 1: back on the film and think that their moments where

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Speaker 1: the character reaches peak sleaziness, but he really just achieves

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Speaker 1: a high plateau of sleaziness throughout his time in the film. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's not dwell on Leviathan too much, but it does

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Speaker 1: relate to what we're gonna talk about today. So today

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Speaker 1: we wanted to address some of the biological ideas about

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Speaker 1: aquatic humanoids. And so one of the things in Leviathan

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Speaker 1: is you spoiler alert for this nineteen eighty nine B movie.

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Speaker 1: You find out that the Russians in the movie, you're

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Speaker 1: trying to create an aquatic humanoid through genetic alteration. Right,

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Speaker 1: of course that ends up creating a monster. A monster

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Speaker 1: I should add that is in many ways kind of

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Speaker 1: an ichno centaur, which we discussed in the first episode,

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Speaker 1: this sort of hybrid of different parts creating this this

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Speaker 1: kind of large centaur esque chimera. So, yeah, you've got

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Speaker 1: this giant monster that's basically got a catfish head and

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Speaker 1: then it's got Daniel Stearn's face sticking out of its

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Speaker 1: back and some other random tentacles and Lamprey's poking off

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Speaker 1: of it. But this was, in the context of the film,

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Speaker 1: an attempt to create Homo aquaticus, the human version of

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Speaker 1: an underwater creature, or maybe the underwater version of the

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Speaker 1: human today. We want to look at could such a

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Speaker 1: creature exist and what would it look like biologically? And

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Speaker 1: if the quatic humanoids could exist in reality, how would

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Speaker 1: they figure into our our picture of human evolution. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating question, of course that you know.

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Speaker 1: The the easy answer is, of course, yes, all life

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Speaker 1: came from the sea, and we have plenty of cases

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Speaker 1: of terrestrial life returning to the sea. So we're not

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Speaker 1: talking about just complete whackadoodle ideas about about life emerging

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Speaker 1: from one or descending into the other. Right, you are

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Speaker 1: correct to point out that that leaving the water for

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Speaker 1: terrestrial existence can happen, and then leaving terrestria is that

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Speaker 1: the now, and I guess leaving the land for a

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Speaker 1: watery existence can also happen. These are totally biologically plausible

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Speaker 1: scenarios and they happen all the time. But could it

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Speaker 1: happen with us? And in fact, has it already happened

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Speaker 1: with us? So I guess it's time to venture into

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Speaker 1: something that people have asked us to discuss on the

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Speaker 1: show before. We we've never done it before, but it

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Speaker 1: is a fringe hypothesis and human evolution called the aquatic

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Speaker 1: ape hypothesis. Yes, and and of course that instantly summons

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Speaker 1: the images of a guerrilla mermaid. I will not, I

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Speaker 1: will not try to convince you to dismiss that that

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Speaker 1: apparition from your mind. But but it is almost impossible

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Speaker 1: not to think of that. So now you're saying, like

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Speaker 1: fish tail with guerrilla top, not like not like mermaid

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Speaker 1: top with guerrilla legs. No no, no fish fish on

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Speaker 1: the bottom, uh, silverback grilla on the top. That's the

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Speaker 1: only way to put it together, Marilla. Yeah, not exactly,

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Speaker 1: but close. Now, before we get into the specifics, of

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Speaker 1: the hypothesis. I just want to start by cautioning that

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Speaker 1: this is not a hypothesis that is widely accepted by

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Speaker 1: scientists or biologists. It's generally frowned upon by paleo anthropologists

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Speaker 1: and other people who study the history of human evolution.

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Speaker 1: But I think it's worth addressing, especially since people have

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Speaker 1: asked about it before, and it fits into this model

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Speaker 1: of the aquatic humanoid and creates at least a plausible

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Speaker 1: sounding scenario in which there could have been an aquatic humanoid. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if we entered into it as a as an alternate hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: if we enter into it as a thought experiment, and

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Speaker 1: we do not enter into it trying to make an

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Speaker 1: argument for the existence of Triton's or or mer people

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Speaker 1: or some sort of underwater race, then I think we're

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Speaker 1: in safe waters. Okay, So it starts with a simple observation.

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Speaker 1: Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom are the other

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Speaker 1: great apes, also known as hominids or the family Homonide.

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Speaker 1: This includes orangutans, guerrillas, chimpanzees, and binobos, and genetically we

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Speaker 1: are extremely similar to these animals, especially to chimpanzees and

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Speaker 1: binobo's anatomically, we're also extremely similar to them. If you

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Speaker 1: look at all of our body parts in the way

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Speaker 1: they fit together. We're very, very close to these animals.

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Speaker 1: But there are a few key differences, and some of

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Speaker 1: the most major of these key differences are that we

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Speaker 1: are mostly hair us bipeds were naked, smooth skinned, and

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Speaker 1: we walk on two legs. And meanwhile, all these other

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Speaker 1: animals are hairy quadrupeds. They're covered from head to toe

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Speaker 1: in in hair for and usually walk on four legs.

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Speaker 1: So why that difference? What happened in the history of

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Speaker 1: only the human branch of this family to drive our

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Speaker 1: ancestors to become relatively smooth and bipedal while the rest

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Speaker 1: of our closest cousins didn't. Now just a note, I've

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Speaker 1: often seen this framed in terms of questions like, quote,

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Speaker 1: how did we get from chimpanzees to humans? That question

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Speaker 1: is obviously nonsense, because we didn't get from chimpanzees to humans.

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Speaker 1: Both chimpanzees and humans came from something that lived more

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Speaker 1: than four million years ago. Chimpanzees are our cousins, not

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Speaker 1: our ancestors. But the question is why do humans look

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Speaker 1: different from them? And from every other hominid given that

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Speaker 1: were such close cousins. Well, in March nineteen sixty a

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Speaker 1: British marine biologist named Alistair Hardy published an article and

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Speaker 1: New Scientists arguing for a pretty startling answer to this.

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Speaker 1: Hardy said, in the distant past, our ancestors distinguished themselves

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Speaker 1: from the other great apes or the other great ape

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Speaker 1: ancestors by becoming an aquatic organism. So the idea here's

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Speaker 1: our ancestors adapted to life in the water for a

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Speaker 1: while and then return to land exactly, and that that

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Speaker 1: shaped the differences between humans today and the other great apes.

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Speaker 1: And so in this article, Hardy summarized his hypothesis about

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Speaker 1: how quote man's immediate ancestors diverged from quote more ape

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Speaker 1: like forms as follows. My thesis is that a branch

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Speaker 1: of this primitive ape stock was forced by competition from

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Speaker 1: life in the trees to feed on the seashores and

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Speaker 1: to hunt for food shellfish, sea urchins, etcetera, in the

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Speaker 1: shallow waters off the coast. I suppose that they were

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Speaker 1: forced into the water, just as we have seen happen

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Speaker 1: in so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I'm imagining

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Speaker 1: this happening in the warmer parts of the world, in

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Speaker 1: the tropical seas, where man could stand being in the

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Speaker 1: water for relatively long periods, that is, several hours at

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Speaker 1: a stretch. I imagine him waiting at first, perhaps still

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Speaker 1: crouching almost on all fours, groping about in the water,

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Speaker 1: digging for shellfish, but becoming gradually more adept at swimming.

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Speaker 1: Then in time I see him becoming more and more

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Speaker 1: of an aquatic animal, going farther out from the shore,

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Speaker 1: I see him diving for shellfish, prizing out worms, burrowing

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Speaker 1: crabs and bivalves from the sands at the bottom of

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Speaker 1: shallow seas, and breaking open sea urchins, and then with

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Speaker 1: increasing skill, capturing fish with his hands. And of course

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Speaker 1: this match is of the what we know about human

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Speaker 1: cultures that have a legacy of existing close to the

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Speaker 1: sea and upon the sea. Yeah, now this is describing

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Speaker 1: what we might call a semi aquatic existence rather than

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Speaker 1: a fully aquatic existence. Right, So it's not that we

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Speaker 1: became whales and lived entirely in the water, but that

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Speaker 1: the hypothesis is that we sort of became like Homo beachkus,

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Speaker 1: that we live adjacent to the water and spent a

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Speaker 1: whole lot of time in it. Homo biwa chicas like it. Now,

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Speaker 1: this might sound crazy, and as we said, it is

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Speaker 1: certainly not accepted by mainstream biologists or paleo anthropologists, but

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Speaker 1: I want to say that there's nothing in principle wrong

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Speaker 1: with the idea of a land dwelling mammal evolving to

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Speaker 1: become an aquatic creature. We mentioned this earlier, but just

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Speaker 1: to reiterate, like, where do you think whales and dolphins

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Speaker 1: came from? More than fifty million years ago, The ancestors

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Speaker 1: of whales and dolphins were four legged, land dwelling mammals

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Speaker 1: that went through many stages of evolution deeper and deeper

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Speaker 1: into the water. They started as these creatures that lived

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Speaker 1: adjacent to the water and spent more and more time

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Speaker 1: in the water over the generations, becoming more and more

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Speaker 1: adapted to it, from the semi aquatic waiting lifestyle of

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Speaker 1: pachactas and into high us to like this more otter

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Speaker 1: like existence of this creature called ambulositis, and then eventually

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Speaker 1: two creatures like the Dora down which start to look

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Speaker 1: sort of like modern whales with eyes on the side

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Speaker 1: and the breathing hole dorsally migrated up toward the top

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Speaker 1: of the head. And there's a similar story with pinnipeds

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Speaker 1: like seals and sea lions. They're believed to have evolved

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Speaker 1: from land dwelling quadrupeds that were something more like bears

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Speaker 1: or musta Lloyd's meaning things like skunks, raccoons, or weasels.

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Speaker 1: So evolution of land dwelling mammals into water dwelling mammals

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Speaker 1: is not only possible, it has happened lots of times.

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Speaker 1: This is something that's totally biologically plausible. The plausibility of

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Speaker 1: that scenario is not something that's necessarily a problem with

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Speaker 1: the aquatic a hypothesis. The problems come in later because

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Speaker 1: what's the real question, did it specifically happen to our ancestors? Right?

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Speaker 1: Because if it, if it did happen, we should be

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Speaker 1: able to find some evidence of it. Right. So, as

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Speaker 1: we said, this, this hypothesis is not popular with scientists

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Speaker 1: and experts in the field, but it has really continued

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Speaker 1: to capture the interest of the public since it was

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Speaker 1: first introduced. So it was first proposed by, as we said,

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Speaker 1: the British marine biologist Alastair Hardy in nineteen sixty but

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Speaker 1: it was really most popularized by a Welsh author named

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Speaker 1: Elaine Morgan in the nineteen seventies and eighties, primarily through

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Speaker 1: she She wrote about it in a book called The

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Speaker 1: Descent of Woman, but then also in a book called

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Speaker 1: The Aquatic Ape. And so Morgan's argument for the aquatic

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Speaker 1: ape hypothesis is interesting, and she she summarized it in

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Speaker 1: a TED talk in two thousand nine before she passed

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Speaker 1: away in two thousand thirteen. And so I think maybe

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Speaker 1: we should look at some of the specifics of her argument.

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Speaker 1: Uh so then we can. We can think about them

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Speaker 1: and see how they stack up. All right, But before

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Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick break, and when

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Speaker 1: we come back, we'll dive in to the aquatic ape

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Speaker 1: theory some more than thank alright, we're back, alright. So

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Speaker 1: Morgan's talk has a lot of framing material in it

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Speaker 1: where she sort of lays the context for her argument

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Speaker 1: by talking about the idea of paradigm shifts and science

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Speaker 1: and about how scientific consensus has often been wrong in

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Speaker 1: the past. That's absolutely true. Scientific consensus has very often

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Speaker 1: been disproved um. But one of the things I think

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Speaker 1: we should be cautious about is when you start to

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Speaker 1: hear somebody using that fact as an argument for their argument,

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Speaker 1: if you know what I mean, it's often the opening

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Speaker 1: argument of somebody who's about to lay some some some

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Speaker 1: really fringe theory on you. Right, So, it is true

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Speaker 1: that scientific consensus has often been wrong, but the fact

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Speaker 1: that it has often been wrong is not evidence that

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Speaker 1: your particular bucking of it is correct. Now, so what

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Speaker 1: is the evidence that Morgan presents for her hypothesis. Well, so,

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Speaker 1: first of all, she looks at the really obvious thing.

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Speaker 1: Where's all the hair, right, the naked skin. When you

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Speaker 1: look for other mammals without body hair like us, they're

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Speaker 1: almost all, she says, water dwelling creatures, the dugong, the walrus, dolphins, whales,

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Speaker 1: the hippopotamus, the manateee. Yeah. The only other example that

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Speaker 1: comes to mind is, of course, the naked mole rat um,

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Speaker 1: which is also kind of a special case given in

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Speaker 1: it's a subterranean rodent that lives with a with a

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Speaker 1: hive like structure. Yeah, she mentions it actually, uh, And

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Speaker 1: then she says, wait a minute, wait a minute, what

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Speaker 1: about the elephant. That's a land dwelling mammal without much

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Speaker 1: body hair? Well, Morgan says, it turns out that more

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Speaker 1: recent studies have found that the elephant had an aquatic ancestor.

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Speaker 1: I looked this up to make sure she's she's sort

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Speaker 1: of correct about this. The elephants are related to an

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Speaker 1: ancient mammal called the more ethereum, which apparently was semi

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Speaker 1: aquatic lived in around swamps and rivers. Maybe not necessarily

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Speaker 1: a direct ancestor of the elephant, but a very close

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Speaker 1: ancient relative of elephants. She says, there's a strong correlation

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Speaker 1: between nakedness and water. There's some hairy or furry mammals

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Speaker 1: that do live in the water, right, You can think

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Speaker 1: of a few, Oh yeah, I mean the otters, beavers.

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Speaker 1: If you want to make a stretch. You can even

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Speaker 1: look at things like like the polar bear, which does

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Speaker 1: is not an aquatic mammal per se, but does spend

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Speaker 1: a lot of time in the water and is an

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Speaker 1: adept swimmer. Yeah, but there, She says. There are almost

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Speaker 1: no hairless or smooth mammals that do not either live

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Speaker 1: in the water or have fairly recent ancestors that lived

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Speaker 1: in the water, and she claims that the only exception,

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned, is the naked Somalian mole rat, which

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Speaker 1: she says, quote never puts its nose above the surface

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Speaker 1: of the ground. Then there's the question of bipedality, right,

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Speaker 1: there's no real comparison in nature because we're the only

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Speaker 1: mammal that walks consistently on two legs. According to Morgan,

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Speaker 1: all the things rear up at the time. You know,

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Speaker 1: at times a cat will rear up on two legs

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Speaker 1: and look exceedingly creepy, but that's at leg the rest

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Speaker 1: of the time. Now that's mammals. Of course, once you

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Speaker 1: start looking into birds and dinosaurs, of course you get

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Speaker 1: basically humanoids by this characteristic. But the some four legged animals,

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Speaker 1: of course, as we say, can occasionally stand up on

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Speaker 1: two legs. When do our closest ape relatives walk on

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Speaker 1: two legs? Well, Morgan claims there's only one circumstance when

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Speaker 1: they always walk on two legs, and it's when they're

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Speaker 1: wading through water. You should remember that, because I want

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Speaker 1: to take issue with that in a bit. Then she

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Speaker 1: she marshals some more evidence. She says that how about

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Speaker 1: subcutaneous fat. Morgan says, we have a layer of fat

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Speaker 1: running underneath our skin and other great apes don't have this.

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Speaker 1: They're fat is stored more internally around their kidneys and

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Speaker 1: so forth, and our fat is stored largely in this

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Speaker 1: layer under our skin, similar to other water dwelling animals,

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Speaker 1: kind of a blubber layer basically. Yeah, I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of an unfair comparison to make here, but we've

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Speaker 1: all seen these images of a hairless guerrilla and they're

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Speaker 1: just completely jacked, just conceedingly ripped in ways. It's like

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Speaker 1: hilarious muscles, comic book cover muscles. Yeah, that it is

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Speaker 1: a comic book physique, and the kind of which you

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Speaker 1: you rarely see in in the average human. Here's another one.

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Speaker 1: She says, how about speech. This is a pretty big difference, right,

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean that's one of the defining properties

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Speaker 1: of of humans. Yeah. In fact, you know, there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of people who would make the case, including

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Speaker 1: somebody we've had on the show in the past. Friends

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Speaker 1: at evolved that a lot of the distinctions we try

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Speaker 1: to make that really separate humans and other animals by

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Speaker 1: some hard line of division, The lines a lot blurrier

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Speaker 1: than you might think. But one thing he sort of

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Speaker 1: made allowances for is maybe language that we that is

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Speaker 1: the closest thing we've got to like a real edge

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Speaker 1: on other animals. And so how come we can talk

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Speaker 1: and other hominids can't. Well, Morgan claims that the difference

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Speaker 1: between a human and a gorilla is not in the

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Speaker 1: speech producing organs of the throat and the lungs, but

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Speaker 1: in the ability to consciously control the use of breath.

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Speaker 1: And this is interesting to me because I think I've

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Speaker 1: asked this on the show before. But why are some

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Speaker 1: body processes controlled entirely by the unconscious nervous system while

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Speaker 1: others are conscious and others can be toggled on and

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Speaker 1: off between conscious and unconscious control. Like you can't consciously

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Speaker 1: toggle on and off your digestion or your heartbeat or

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Speaker 1: your metabolism. But even though most of the time your

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Speaker 1: breathing is unconscious and automatic, you can take it over

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Speaker 1: with your executive control and consciously toggle your breath on

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Speaker 1: and off if you want to, like what causes this difference? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if memory serves me correctly, thinking back to

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Speaker 1: our John C. Lily episodes in the past, uh, dolphins

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Speaker 1: UH have such manual control over their breathing that they

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Speaker 1: can arguably decide to just shut it down and to

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Speaker 1: drown themselves. Wow. Well, I mean that would be an

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Speaker 1: example that would sort of go with her hypothesis. Right.

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Speaker 1: The idea is that, uh, the only reason we would

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Speaker 1: be able to evolve this conscious control of our breath

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Speaker 1: is if our past ancestors were shaped by a selection

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Speaker 1: pressure that favored the ability to like hold the breath

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Speaker 1: and dive underwater. She says, This would explain a lot.

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Speaker 1: I do think that's a really interesting question of why

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Speaker 1: we can do that. I'm not sure I'm going to

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Speaker 1: go along with her on this being an exclusively human

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Speaker 1: and aquatic mammal trait because I don't know. I've seen

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Speaker 1: videos of dogs diving deep underwater and other mammals doing that.

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Speaker 1: It seems that they have some kind of ability to

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Speaker 1: hold their breath and they're not semi aquatic mammals. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would agree with that. Okay, Another thing, she says,

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Speaker 1: how about hydrodynamics. We are anatomically streamlined. Do you ever

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Speaker 1: think about why is the human body basically a straight line?

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Speaker 1: Why are we sort of dart ape where we can

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Speaker 1: dive smoothly into the water. She says, quote, try to

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Speaker 1: imagine a guerrilla diving into water. I think I've seen

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Speaker 1: it done in a cartoon, but that's about it. Well,

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Speaker 1: they it's like a cannonball, right, they make a big splash.

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Speaker 1: Morgan says, we're halfway between being a chimp into fish

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Speaker 1: and so Morgan, after marshaling this evidence, she says that

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Speaker 1: she wants to insist the idea is not lunatic fringe.

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Speaker 1: And I'd say I largely agree. I think it's probably wrong,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think it's like the ancient aliens hypothesis

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Speaker 1: or something. I think it is an extraneous hypothesis that

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Speaker 1: that we don't really need to resort to, and so

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Speaker 1: it's not parsimonious, but I think it's like reasonable to

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Speaker 1: play around with this idea. Yeah, I would agree it

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Speaker 1: is certainly not ancient aliens. But there are some some issues,

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Speaker 1: some some problems, and some gaps that have not been

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Speaker 1: filled in by uh fossil evidence for example. Right, But

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Speaker 1: the real question is like, what is the substance of

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Speaker 1: the critique from biology and paleo anthropology. Why would they

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Speaker 1: not accept this hypothesis. So, starting with a few answers,

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Speaker 1: probably the biggest weakness for the hypothesis is and this

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Speaker 1: might sound kind of silly when we say it, but

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Speaker 1: there's no direct evidence for it. There's no fossil evidence

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Speaker 1: whatsoever that we've ever had any instance of an aquatic humanoid. Right,

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Speaker 1: show me the remains of the aquatic humanoid, and it

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Speaker 1: is the directive, and we do not have an answer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: nothing like that. Now, So this means it's all inference

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Speaker 1: and speculation. It doesn't make it necessarily wrong because we're

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Speaker 1: talking about the ancient past, and sometimes when we're trying

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Speaker 1: to figure stuff out about the ancient past, we don't

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Speaker 1: have direct evidence. Sometimes we're just in that situation and

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Speaker 1: all you've got is inference in speculation. So you just

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Speaker 1: try to find the best most plausible inference and speculation

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Speaker 1: to form your eye ideas around. But we have to

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Speaker 1: acknowledge that there is no direct evidence for it, and

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Speaker 1: so it's kind of in a weak starting place. Physical

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Speaker 1: evidence would make a huge difference. Now. I came across

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Speaker 1: another criticism of the aquatic aphypothesis by the paleo anthropologist

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Speaker 1: John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin Madison. UH. He

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Speaker 1: runs a popular paleo anthropology blog, and he put a

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Speaker 1: post on his blog about this idea. UH some of

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Speaker 1: the points he makes are are pretty interesting. One of

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Speaker 1: the things is that Hawks claims the aquatic ap hypothesis

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Speaker 1: is not parsimonious. Now, parsimony refers to the idea of

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Speaker 1: the number of assumptions you have to make without evidence

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Speaker 1: in order to entertain a hypothesis. So, for a quick example,

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Speaker 1: imagine you leave a sandwich sitting on your desk at work.

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Speaker 1: You walk away for a minute, you come back, there

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Speaker 1: is a human bite shaped chunk of the sandwich missing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: Now you look around, everybody's just working like normal. Noe,

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Speaker 1: no direct evidence of what happened. So you have to

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Speaker 1: make an inference. Right by the way, I am picturing

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Speaker 1: the scenario taking place in the movie Leviathan of those coworkers. Right, So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: did did Daniel Stern take a bite out of your sandwich?

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Speaker 1: Or what happened? Since there's no unusual behavior, no sign

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Speaker 1: of anything wrong, you've just got to come up with

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Speaker 1: a hypothesis that seems reasonable. Now, you could hypothesize that

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Speaker 1: Daniel Stern or another one of your coworkers took a

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Speaker 1: bite out of the sandwich, or you could hypothesize that

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Speaker 1: a polar bear snuck into your office undetected, and this

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Speaker 1: was a polar bear that had undergone a surgical body

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Speaker 1: modification so that its mouth had an uncharacteristically human shaped bite.

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Speaker 1: And then it took a bite out of your sandwich

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Speaker 1: with its surgical human mouth, and it didn't like it,

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Speaker 1: and it snuck away without being noticed. Yeah, that that

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Speaker 1: explanation is is much further removed from reality and requires

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Speaker 1: a number of different steps to get there. But like

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Speaker 1: the aquatic a hypothesis, it's internally consistent, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing on the face of it that makes that impossible.

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Speaker 1: It's just it requires a bunch of extra assumptions. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, like one, it's basically like any investigation, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: if you were investigating an actual sandwich incident in your workplace,

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Speaker 1: it's far more likely that someone in the office did

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Speaker 1: it than someone from a neighboring office who would have

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Speaker 1: a harder time accessing the location in which the sandwich

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Speaker 1: is stored. Yeah, then you'd also have to hypothesize them

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Speaker 1: sneaking in and all that, And like the further away

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Speaker 1: you get from the sandwich from your office, they the

426
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:40,880
Speaker 1: moral leap. It becomes. Right, So the main reason you'd

427
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 1: favor the coworker hypothesis is that you have to make

428
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:48,400
Speaker 1: many fewer assumptions without evidence to assume it, and so

429
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 1: at first glance, this kind of thinking can make something

430
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 1: like the aquatic a hypothesis look good actually, because hey,

431
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,159
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it's just one assumption you have to

432
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: make in order to explain all this different stuff. But

433
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,639
Speaker 1: the more you examine it, the more it becomes clear

434
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: that the aquatic a hypothesis actually requires a lot of

435
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: assumptions of things not in evidence that just sort of

436
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:14,280
Speaker 1: get rolled up into one big scenario you're picturing. You

437
00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: can say that all how about all evolutionary increments and

438
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 1: all steps in evolution of all creatures are caused by

439
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,400
Speaker 1: the ghost of biology, which is a spirit that lives

440
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,480
Speaker 1: in the sky that decides that a creature should change

441
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 1: and then makes little mutations to change it over time.

442
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 1: That's just one assumption that explains absolutely everything in biology.

443
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 1: But yeah, but it's a big assumption that that defies

444
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 1: or at least goes beyond the laws of science. It's

445
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: like saying a ghost took a bite out of the sandwich. Yeah,

446
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: it's only one step, but it's a step that that

447
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: goes beyond uh, the scientific understanding of the workplace or

448
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 1: the world itself. But then actually Hawks makes another point

449
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:58,359
Speaker 1: that I think is a crucial extension of this idea.

450
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 1: So it's not just what we've already meant and about

451
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: some types of assumptions appearing parsimonious, but actually requiring a

452
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 1: lot of assumptions even though they only seem to be

453
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,880
Speaker 1: one scenario. Hawks actually shows a second way that it's

454
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:14,880
Speaker 1: not parsimonious, and he writes, quote, certainly, it makes sense

455
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 1: that hominids would develop new anatomies to adapt to such

456
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 1: an alien environment. He's talking about adapting to the water.

457
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:26,879
Speaker 1: But once those hominids returned to land, forsaking their aquatic homeland,

458
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:30,120
Speaker 1: the same features that were adaptive in the water would

459
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:34,520
Speaker 1: now be maladaptive on land. What would prevent those hominids

460
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: from reverting to the features of their land based ancestors,

461
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: as well as nearly every other medium sized land mammal.

462
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,199
Speaker 1: More than simple phylogenetic inertia is required to explain this,

463
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: since the very reasons that the aquatic ape theory rejects

464
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:53,000
Speaker 1: the Savannah model would apply to the descendants of the

465
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: aquatic apes once they moved to the savannah. This is

466
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: far from trivial, since fossil hominids did inhabit open woodlands

467
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: starting by eight million years ago and did move to

468
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:07,119
Speaker 1: the open savannah by three million years ago. Okay, so

469
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: the idea here is that want you could maybe reasonably

470
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: make the argument that all right, the aquatic humanoids move

471
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: out of the water, but they're still living close enough

472
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: to the water. They're still going in the water. Uh,

473
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 1: you know, there's still a coastal species. You can say, well,

474
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,200
Speaker 1: maybe they retain some of those features. But if they're

475
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: moving further inland, if they're becoming an inland species of

476
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: savannah species, then they wouldn't need those adaptations anymore. The

477
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 1: the the economy of natural selection would drive those away. Yeah.

478
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:35,800
Speaker 1: One thing to be clear about here is that a

479
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 1: very commonly still believed but actually now obsolete hypothesis is

480
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 1: the idea that anatomical modernity in human beings evolved on

481
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: the savannah, that we became basically the animals we are

482
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,440
Speaker 1: now on the savannah landscape. That used to be believed,

483
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 1: and now that's not true anymore. What what generally is

484
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 1: believed is that we became basically Homo sapiens in a

485
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: woodland environment and in something you know, basically a tree

486
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 1: oriented existence, and then later moved to the savannah. Now,

487
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: the aquatic a hypothesis is saying, no, somewhere in there

488
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,239
Speaker 1: before we got to the savannah, we were in the

489
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:17,680
Speaker 1: water if if that's true, though, we eventually moved back

490
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: to the savannah, and these traits that we've still got

491
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,640
Speaker 1: had to somehow be adaptive to the savannah. So why

492
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,360
Speaker 1: aren't you just assuming that they're the traits that were

493
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,399
Speaker 1: adaptive on the savannah. Yeah, this is this is a

494
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: strong point. Yeah, and so to continue, hawks says quote.

495
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 1: In other words, the aquatic ape theory explains all of

496
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: these features, but it explains them all twice. Every one

497
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 1: of the features encompassed by the theory still requires a

498
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: reason for it to be maintained after hominids left the

499
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 1: aquatic environment. So it feels like it becomes less of

500
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:58,120
Speaker 1: an exercise and explaining what we are with this aquatic explanation,

501
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: and it becomes more about shoehorn earning the aquatic period

502
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 1: into our evolutionary history. Another thing I think we should

503
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 1: do is just look a little bit closer at some

504
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: of those individual planks of the argument that people like

505
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 1: Hardy and Morgan brought up because a lot of them

506
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: they sound so synsical, right, They sound very, very truthy

507
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: at a distance, but they become a lot weaker, I

508
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: think once you start looking up close at them. For example,

509
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 1: the idea of hairlessness. Right, Morgan talks about the strong

510
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:32,840
Speaker 1: link between aquatic existence in mammals and hairlessness. Now, first

511
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 1: of all, I think it's worth pointing out that we

512
00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: are not hairless. It's true we do have hair, some

513
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 1: more than others, but it's there. Yeah, our body hair

514
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:44,360
Speaker 1: coverage is not total. It's not nearly at the level

515
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: of the other great apes, but neither is the body

516
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:48,479
Speaker 1: hair coat. You know, the body hair coverage of other

517
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: great apes is also not total. Our hair patterns are different,

518
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:54,560
Speaker 1: but we do still have a pretty decent amount of

519
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: natural body hair. Also, the distinction between hairy land dwelling

520
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:01,719
Speaker 1: mammals and smooth aquatic mammals isn't a start stark, as

521
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: Morgan suggests. Now, she does to be fair acknowledge otters

522
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but there are also so many

523
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:13,720
Speaker 1: other hairy and furry semi aquatic mammals we mentioned furry beavers.

524
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 1: But there's also the furry platypus, the water opossum, which

525
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 1: is furry Alan swamp monkey, which is native Central Africa.

526
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:25,400
Speaker 1: It's covered in brown, gray and green fur. Semi aquatic cats,

527
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: semi aquatic her pestids like the crab eating mongoose. You've

528
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: got polar bears that we mentioned earlier. You've got water

529
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: diving bats. So a semi aquatic lifestyle clearly doesn't always

530
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: lead to the loss of hair or fur. Furthermore, there

531
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 1: are other hypotheses that could explain why we have relatively

532
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 1: less hair than our closest relatives. So there was an

533
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: explainer in Scientific American where a researcher named Mark Pagel,

534
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: the head of the evolutionary biology group at the University

535
00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: of Reading in England and the editor of the Encyclopedia

536
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: of Evil Ouan, explained some recent thinking. One of the

537
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: most common ideas about why humans lost a lot of

538
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: their body hair has to do with thermoregulation. It says

539
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: we lost a lot of body hair because we needed

540
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: a better way to keep cool. Now, this could have

541
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: been a pressure introduced by other changes in our ancestors

542
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: survival needs. Maybe if we migrated from a cooler climate

543
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: like underneath a thick tree canopy to a hotter climate

544
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 1: like an open, sun exposed woodland or savannah, we might

545
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: need to lose the hair or if our survival niche

546
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: became more oriented around intense, prolonged exercise, such as the

547
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: prolonged chasing of prey animals. Yeah, exactly. Another explanation. This

548
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 1: one's pretty interesting to me. Parasite resistance. Oh yeah, because

549
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: when you think of of animals with hair, you think

550
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: of the various nasty parasites that can be crawling around

551
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: in there. I mean, we've talked about the the extent

552
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: to which mammalian especially i'mate social bonding is based around grooming,

553
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 1: sitting around and picking stuff out of other people's hair. Yeah,

554
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 1: and I mean you think of the constant thread of lice.

555
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: I mean, my child is in an elementary school, so

556
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 1: that the threat of that the head life explosion uh

557
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 1: is always there. Uh. So, by by losing the body here,

558
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: we've kind of what driven the lice to the head

559
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 1: in the pubic region, right. Yeah, I mean they should

560
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: solve that by having just like grooming time where the

561
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 1: kids sit around and pick lice out of each other's hair.

562
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 1: They probably go for that. So Pagel and a colleague

563
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: named Walter Bodmer published research in two thousand three in

564
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: Royal Society Biology Letters supporting the hypothesis that we lost

565
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: our body hair to protect ourselves against parasites as as

566
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: we all know, you know, ticks and lice and biting

567
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: flies all they all make this happy home in thick

568
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: body hair. They love it. And these ecto parasites are

569
00:32:56,800 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: not only annoying, they can spread disease. Like we don't

570
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: want our kids to get lice, but lots of these

571
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: kinds of parasites are are worse than lice. They can

572
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,680
Speaker 1: give you something that will kill you. Yeah, I just

573
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 1: I'll direct our listeners back to our episode on on

574
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 1: on ticks if you want some more information there. But

575
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: here's something interesting to think about. Once our ancient ancestors

576
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 1: could build fires and construct clothing, suddenly they just did

577
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: not need as much hair to keep warm at night

578
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: when it got cold. But the hair could still serve

579
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:35,920
Speaker 1: as a refuge for these disease spreading parasites. So once

580
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:38,520
Speaker 1: you can build fires, and once you can wear other

581
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 1: animal skins and stuff, is clothing there would have been

582
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: a pressure against body hair, because body hair is this

583
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: parasite vulnerability without much comparative benefit to make up for it.

584
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 1: If you can keep warm anyway, why have this parasite

585
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: vulnerability hanging around. Yeah, Like when we were talking about

586
00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:01,479
Speaker 1: aquatic apes supposedly returning to the land, like, I instantly thought, well,

587
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 1: when I get out of a shower, I grab a towel.

588
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 1: So perhaps you know, the naked ape emerges, it murders,

589
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: a hairy animal of some of some form, puts on

590
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 1: its fur. Like. It's one thing to think of that,

591
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 1: but then this, the the use of fire technology would

592
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: be an even greater step. Yeah, so, Pagel writes, quote

593
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,720
Speaker 1: human lice infections, which are confined to the hairy areas

594
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 1: of our bodies, seem to support the parasite hypothesis. Naked

595
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 1: mole rats, animals that can be described as resembling quote,

596
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:36,720
Speaker 1: overcooked sausages with buck teeth, also seemed to support the theory.

597
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 1: They live underground in large colonies in which parasites would

598
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: be readily transmitted, but the combined warmth of their bodies

599
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: and the confined underground space probably negate the problem of

600
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 1: losing heat. To cold air for these animals, allowing them

601
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,879
Speaker 1: also to become naked. So the same kind of like

602
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: other warmth sources that could have selected for body hair

603
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,280
Speaker 1: loss in humans, can also select for body hair loss

604
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 1: in naked mole rats. And then there's a totally different

605
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: kind of answer sexual selection. Sexual selection occurs when a

606
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: pressure on some type of trait in the body is

607
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: selected for, not because it provides a survival advantage, but

608
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 1: because members of the opposite sex prefer to breed with

609
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:26,280
Speaker 1: people possessing that that trait, And so, like the peacock's tail,

610
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: relatively smooth and hairless skin could have been selected for

611
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: because it's a way to advertise to mates that you

612
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 1: have good health and a lack of parasites. It's a

613
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: way of showing off that you don't have parasites on you. Yeah.

614
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about that, but but yeah, you

615
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: have a hairless, shirtless hominid walking around it showing showing

616
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:48,840
Speaker 1: itself off and saying, look, do you how many bites

617
00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: do you see? How many? How many crawling parasites do you? Say? None?

618
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: I'm a desirable mate, I'm in good shape. Here's the question.

619
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 1: I actually don't know the answer to this, is there

620
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: a reason I can't think of Harry body Builders? Is that, like,

621
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:05,000
Speaker 1: is there a biological reason that like super muscle e

622
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 1: dudes don't have hair on their chests or do they

623
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,240
Speaker 1: shave it off or what I think generally what's happening

624
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:14,520
Speaker 1: is they're they're having it waxed. Yeah, better off the muscles.

625
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of muscular, hairy dudes. I mean,

626
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:20,400
Speaker 1: you can can do a search on that and you

627
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: will get some answers. But but yeah, my understanding is

628
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: that it's a it's about waxing of the body hair

629
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: so that you can show off the muscle. I'm just

630
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: thinking about like the movie Pumping Iron, where there's just

631
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: like it's just really really smooth. Oh yeah, yeah, you

632
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:39,280
Speaker 1: those guys are waxing in shave and I'm sure. Well, anyway,

633
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:41,360
Speaker 1: it's not clear to me that there's an obvious winner

634
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: among the proposed ideas about how we lost our body hair.

635
00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: But uh, any any of these are still viable ideas

636
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 1: awaiting the arrival of new supporting evidence, And so I

637
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: don't see a reason that the aquatic a hypothesis is

638
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: like a better alternative that you have to go to

639
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: now to address another plank. The argument the bipedality like

640
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: that's also a great ongoing debate. The old theory, of course,

641
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: was that we had to stand up to see over

642
00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: tall grass on the savannah. That's been debunked. Now we

643
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: you know, we were in a more woodland type environment

644
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: when we when we evolved bipedality. But anyway, what made

645
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: us stand upright in that woodland environment? Charles Darwin thought

646
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: we might have evolved bipedalism to free up our hands

647
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:27,880
Speaker 1: for tool use. This seems unlikely since there's fossil evidence

648
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: for bipedalism from before we have evidence of ancient tools.

649
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: But there are other ideas like perhaps bipedalism emerged from

650
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 1: a gathering lifestyle where our ancestors began to walk on

651
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,919
Speaker 1: two legs so they could use two arms to carry things. Uh,

652
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:46,479
Speaker 1: this seems possible given observations that chimpanzees tend to walk

653
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:49,360
Speaker 1: on two legs and use two arms to carry food

654
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 1: items that they consider rare or having great value. Now,

655
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: going back to Morgan's argument about bipedality, she says, you know,

656
00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: wind to our closest tape, relatives walk on two legs.

657
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 1: She said, as they always walk on two legs when

658
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: they're wading through water, and that's the only time they

659
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:08,719
Speaker 1: always walk on two legs. Uh, this is apparently not

660
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 1: true because, as we've said, like chimpanzees will walk on

661
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:15,600
Speaker 1: two legs and use two arms if they're carrying something valuable. Also,

662
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 1: I was like, well, let's let's see. I bet there's

663
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 1: video of gorillas waiting through water on the internet. I

664
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:24,280
Speaker 1: looked it up. Uh, nope, I mean there are lots

665
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: of videos of guerrillas waiting in the water, and most

666
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: of the time they're doing it on four legs. I

667
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: mean there are a few instances where they'd rear up

668
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:35,879
Speaker 1: on two legs. Uh. So this doesn't totally disprove the hypothesis,

669
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: but it really kind of undermines this plank of it. Well,

670
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:40,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense because if you're going into

671
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: the water, there's a good chance you you want to

672
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 1: use your hands to feel for things. And granted, primates

673
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: don't have exactly the same hand foot scenario is as humans,

674
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: but you're probably going in there you want to feel

675
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: the feel around for the rocks, You want to feel

676
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: around for something that you're scavenging for, right, Yeah, exactly

677
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: and so definitely li guerrillas will walk on four legs

678
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: in the water. I've seen it. But I guess we

679
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:07,160
Speaker 1: have to come back to this question of like, obviously

680
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 1: we can't wholly judge. I mean, it's it's possible that

681
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 1: something like the aquatic ap hypothesis has some grain of

682
00:39:13,200 --> 00:39:16,760
Speaker 1: truth to it. But uh, if the biologists and paleo

683
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: anthropologists are correct that this hypothesis is wrong, it's not

684
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:24,479
Speaker 1: not parsimonious, there's no reason to resort to it. Why

685
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:27,239
Speaker 1: is it so tenacious? Like we have had lots of

686
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: people right to us and say, do the aquatic ape theory?

687
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: You know, we we want to hear about it. And

688
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't think it's interesting to talk about,

689
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: but it's it's not really taken seriously by experts in

690
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:42,319
Speaker 1: the field. So why is it so captivating in the

691
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: public imagination. Well, I think part of the answer is

692
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: our entire first episode, where we talked about our mythological

693
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:52,279
Speaker 1: and fictional obsession with the idea of of humans that

694
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: live in the water, a humans that live beneath the waves.

695
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 1: But there is a there is a deep cultural attraction

696
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 1: to that idea, and it kind of bleeds over into

697
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: aquatic a theory sometimes. I mean even even in cases

698
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 1: when it's you know, it's not somebody saying, hey, I

699
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: think mermaids are real and here's some science to pack

700
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 1: it up, right. Yeah, it's one of it's kind of

701
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: a sticky hypothesis. It's one of those things that, like

702
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:17,279
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I want to be fair to it.

703
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like lunatic fringe. I don't think

704
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: it is ancient aliens, but I don't think there's a

705
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: good reason to resort to it. But it's one of

706
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: those things that's just so interesting to the mind. It's

707
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: so fun to picture and so fun to entertain that

708
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: it's sort of like overrides our sense of disinterest in

709
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:40,880
Speaker 1: other things that seem, you know, not necessary to believe in. Uh.

710
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,800
Speaker 1: There's actually a paper from nine in the Journal of

711
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: Human Evolution by John H. Langdon called Umbrella Hypotheses and

712
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: Parsimony and Human Evolution a critique of the aquatic a hypothesis,

713
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 1: and Langdon talks about this idea of these umbrella hypotheses,

714
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 1: which he says, our quote aesthetically a peeling because they

715
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:05,919
Speaker 1: appear to be parsimonious, so they're internally consistent, and by

716
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:10,760
Speaker 1: offering this one umbrella hypothesis that explains a range of things,

717
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: and they appear to explain a whole lot, as we

718
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, without making you, without requiring you

719
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: to assume a whole lot, but they actually are requiring

720
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 1: you to assume more than they appear to. And so,

721
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: in trying to explain why these types of ideas stay

722
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:30,799
Speaker 1: popular with the public, he says, quote one reason for

723
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 1: this is that simple answers, however wrong, are easier to

724
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: communicate and are more readily accepted than the more sound

725
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: but more complex solutions. Evolutionary science must wrestle with this problem,

726
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 1: both in its own community and in the education of

727
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:47,919
Speaker 1: the public. I agree. I mean we see we see

728
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 1: this time and time again, and it reminds me of

729
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: ongoing discussions regarding climate change, which we've discussed on the

730
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 1: on the show, and just sort of the challenges of

731
00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:59,280
Speaker 1: science communication in general. Yeah, there are so many ideas

732
00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: that just because they're simple to communicate and easy to

733
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 1: say and easy to remember, they there's almost like a

734
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:11,240
Speaker 1: survival advantage they have. There's like a selection pressure against

735
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: things that are hard to explain, and a multiplication incentive

736
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 1: on ideas that are interesting visually to imagine and have

737
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 1: sort of like the the truthiness feeling, the feeling of

738
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 1: explaining a lot, and are easy to communicate, And I

739
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: think the aquatic a hypothesis falls in that category. Yeah. Like,

740
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 1: for instance, I come back to what a physicist Brian

741
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:39,359
Speaker 1: Green said about climate science and the most recent World

742
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: Science Festival in New York. He talked about how he decided, right,

743
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna bone up on climate

744
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: science so that I can talk about it and defend it.

745
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:49,759
Speaker 1: And he just he gave up on it because and

746
00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 1: this is a this is a lifetime of work. It's

747
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 1: a lifetime of work, and this is an accomplished physicist

748
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 1: saying yeah, I can't I can't get up to speed

749
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:58,799
Speaker 1: on this in the way that would be required for

750
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 1: me to go to bat for it against climate change

751
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,399
Speaker 1: deniers and so forth. So but on the same hand,

752
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 1: it seems like it would be it would be far

753
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 1: easier for Brian Green, uh, for you or I as

754
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:14,279
Speaker 1: well to bone up on aquatic ape theory. You know,

755
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: if someone said, all right, Joe, you're going on Fox

756
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: News tomorrow to defend aquatic ape theory. I could do it. Yeah,

757
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 1: I mean I wouldn't want to, but I could do it.

758
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 1: It's gotten his favor, that truthiness gravity. Yeah, all right

759
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 1: on that. Now we're gonna take a quick break and

760
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna talk to genetics a

761
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: little bit. All right, we're back. Hey. You know so

762
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: in the break, I was just thinking about this. Uh,

763
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,799
Speaker 1: I wonder if I have aquatic humanoids, if this, if

764
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 1: this words true, would they have an easier time urinating

765
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:50,840
Speaker 1: in the water. Best off conversation ever, No, I know

766
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Like you can kind of when

767
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: somebody's peeing in the water, you can, like you were saying,

768
00:43:56,080 --> 00:43:57,879
Speaker 1: you can see it on their face. Yeah, there's a look,

769
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:00,360
Speaker 1: there's a there's kind of a stillness to the body.

770
00:44:00,719 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 1: I mean in my own case, like if I'm not

771
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:04,759
Speaker 1: in the pool, but if I'm in the ocean or something,

772
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 1: I feel like I I have a I have to

773
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 1: really go into a certain um, you know, state of

774
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: mind to pull it off, and I'd probably look like

775
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:16,800
Speaker 1: I'm peeing in the ocean. Thanks a lot, Robert colluding

776
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 1: the ocean for the rest of us, well, you know,

777
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 1: the fish do it, the mr folk do it, So

778
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 1: you know, why should I have to walk back to

779
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 1: the conduct. I know exactly what you're talking about. There's

780
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: this kind of like, uh, you see people with like

781
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 1: the the kind of the eyes roll up and they

782
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:33,839
Speaker 1: kind of tents up and grit their teeth a little bit. Yeah,

783
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 1: So I wonder if if this would be something, if

784
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:38,600
Speaker 1: this would be in favor of the aquatic ape, like

785
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 1: it's something that we lost we would have lost upon

786
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: returning to land. Or is it just evidence that we

787
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:48,840
Speaker 1: were never uh, some sort of an aquatic committed species

788
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 1: that was totally at ease peeing in the pool. Okay,

789
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: let's get beyond the aquatic ap hypothesis, which imagines this

790
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: semi aquatic uh period in in human history. As as

791
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: we've said, we're not convinced by this idea. It's not

792
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: absolutely impossible, but I don't think there's a good reason

793
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: to go there. However, if we want to entertain the

794
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: idea of a totally aquatic humanoid, a humanoid of the deep,

795
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:16,839
Speaker 1: what would we be, what would we be looking at?

796
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 1: What would that entail? Well, I suppose there are basically

797
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: two ways to look at it, right, either something humanoid

798
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:26,080
Speaker 1: evolves independently of humans in the deep, or a hominid

799
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: variety splits and evolves into a primarily aquatic species. Okay,

800
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: so this would be an example of either convergent evolution

801
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: where some kind of aquatic species converges on basically the

802
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: humanoid form, or it would be a divergent but basically

803
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,280
Speaker 1: the same kind of thing we see in the evolution

804
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,359
Speaker 1: of whales and dolphins. They were land dwelling mammals, then

805
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,720
Speaker 1: they became semi aquatic mammals, and then they became totally

806
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 1: aquatic mammals. Right now, I think the idea of covergent

807
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:57,759
Speaker 1: evolution in the deep. I mean, I can't think of

808
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: anything that that lives is a primarily aquatic lifestyle that

809
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: looks anything like a human being. Sometimes you get some

810
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:12,399
Speaker 1: kind of creepy human behavior convergence with octopi. That's true.

811
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I said octopi. Octopuses, Yeah, there there are

812
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: there are some some cephalopods that have kind of a

813
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 1: walking technique on on the bottom of the sea. There

814
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: are some fish that quote unquote walk on the bottom

815
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:28,719
Speaker 1: of the sea. They move around with their fins. But

816
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: that's a far cry from having something that that really

817
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: has anything like a human body like even in just

818
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: you know, very broad strokes. You know, we've touched on

819
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 1: a number of the different examples though, of of of

820
00:46:41,719 --> 00:46:44,440
Speaker 1: creatures that have got the other direction, mammals that have

821
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,720
Speaker 1: returned to the sea. But I think perhaps the manatee

822
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: and its skin are our best examples to look to

823
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 1: for you know, for what for what a creature like

824
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: this would would be, what what an aquatic humanoid would

825
00:46:57,200 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: consist of? Right? And you know, we called them the

826
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: Sirenians for a reason. It's ironic that these these are

827
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: creatures that partially inspired our visions of mermaids. So we're

828
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: talking about the manates here and the doo gong. Uh.

829
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: They're the world's only marine mammal herbivores, and the only

830
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 1: her herbivorous mammals ever to have become totally aquatic. I've

831
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: never thought about that, the only marine mammal herbivores, while

832
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:26,440
Speaker 1: all the others eat eat the flesh. Yeah, even if

833
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: it's very tiny bits of flesh, very tiny creatures, they're

834
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 1: still eating creatures. So Sirenians have existed for more than

835
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:37,760
Speaker 1: fifty million years, having diverged from the Panugu lata clade.

836
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: The closest living land relatives to the Sirenians are the

837
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:47,320
Speaker 1: elephants and the high axes. Now a, this is a

838
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: pretty interesting In two thousand and sixteen, studied by Maria

839
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: Hikina and Nathan Clark looked at three major independent evolutionary

840
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: events in which mammals returned to the sea and what

841
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: sort of evl utionary tradeoffs took place. So they used

842
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 1: a fifty nine placental mammal genomes to calculate the relative

843
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 1: rates of evolution for all branches. In eighteen thousand and

844
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:16,760
Speaker 1: forty nine gene trees, they calculated a genome wide average

845
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: rate of evolution across all species. Basically, they wanted to

846
00:48:19,680 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: see if these uh oceanic returns entailed and evolutionary acceleration

847
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: or deceleration. That's interesting. So they identified three main themes

848
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:36,239
Speaker 1: a burst of adaptation, then relaxation, and additional constraint. They

849
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:40,440
Speaker 1: identified marine accelerated genes to the tune of about nine percent,

850
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: and they related to these different features new functions for

851
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: genes forming skin and connective tissue, sensory systems, muscle function,

852
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:54,920
Speaker 1: skin and connective tissue lung function. So an example here

853
00:48:54,960 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 1: would be accelerated adaptation for a gene encoding a lung

854
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,800
Speaker 1: surfactant protein that may have been necessary for diving, and

855
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:09,319
Speaker 1: then lipid metabolism. But they also identified marine decellered accelerated

856
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:12,640
Speaker 1: genes even more than the you know, the accelerated and

857
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:15,840
Speaker 1: these related to a general loss of the number of

858
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,240
Speaker 1: sensory genes for smell and taste. No, no more taste

859
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:20,879
Speaker 1: once we got in the water. Yeah, I mean, it's

860
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,800
Speaker 1: it seems to be the case that that aquatic mammals

861
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:29,680
Speaker 1: have have a much decreased sense of taste. So I

862
00:49:29,719 --> 00:49:31,959
Speaker 1: guess once you're a sperm whale and you're like trying

863
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 1: to eat giant squids, you just don't want to be

864
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:38,320
Speaker 1: tasting that well, uh, something like that. Now. Other marine

865
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: decelerated genes included molecular molecular maintenance strategies such as DNA repair,

866
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 1: chromosometal maintenance, immune response, and program cell death. So all

867
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: of this, they said, meshes with the increased constraint on

868
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 1: somatic cell maintenance for such creatures. And I have a

869
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:59,439
Speaker 1: quote from the paper here, quote hundreds of genes accelerated

870
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:03,360
Speaker 1: their evolute sctionary rates in all three marine mammal lineages

871
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:07,399
Speaker 1: during their transition to aquatic life. These marine accelerated genes

872
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:11,839
Speaker 1: are highly enriched for pathways. The control recognized functional adaptations

873
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:16,560
Speaker 1: in marine mammals, including muscle physiology, lipid metabolism, sensory systems,

874
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: and skin and connective tissue. The accelerations resulted from both

875
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 1: adaptive evolution as seen in skin and lung genes, and

876
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:28,719
Speaker 1: loss of function as in gustatory and olfactory genes. In

877
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: regard to sensory systems, this finding provides further evidence that

878
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:36,720
Speaker 1: reduced senses of taste and smell are ubiquitous in marine mammals.

879
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: So naturally, this is not a blueprint for evolved aquatic humanoids,

880
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: but I think it does give give us some sort

881
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: of idea of the genetic changes that might take place

882
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 1: over millions of years until we reached the point that

883
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 1: we're Kevin Costner from from water World. But but how

884
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: do we reach the point that we're Dennis Hopper in

885
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:59,040
Speaker 1: water World? Well, all I can say is that Kevin

886
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,799
Speaker 1: Costner's character or would probably not have a good sense

887
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: of taste based on this research. It's a bummer man. Yeah,

888
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:07,279
Speaker 1: All right, So let's come back to the reverse though,

889
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:10,280
Speaker 1: something from the deep evolving to life on the surface.

890
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: This is of course the story of all terrestrial life,

891
00:51:13,719 --> 00:51:16,680
Speaker 1: dating back to the terrestrial land invasion of the Devonian era.

892
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: But when we try and think of a humanoid creature

893
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: evolving under the water, it gets a little sticky. We

894
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:24,840
Speaker 1: get into the creature from the Black Lagoon territory, we

895
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: get into uh Z or Bloodwaters of dr Z territory.

896
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: Because in these cases uh they often will bring up

897
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:37,800
Speaker 1: certain fish that can walk on land as examples of

898
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:40,320
Speaker 1: of how this might work, or fish that can breathe

899
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: both above and below the water. And we do have

900
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:49,080
Speaker 1: ambulatory fish walking fish such as the mud skipper. We

901
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: have that the hand fish and frog fish, which quote

902
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: unquote walk on the seafloor with specialized fins, and of

903
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 1: course they're the there's the walking catfish of Southeast Asia,

904
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: which we should be clear does not so much as

905
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:05,480
Speaker 1: walk as it flops and flips and wriggles around. And

906
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 1: uh the lungfish, the fish highlighted in the creature movies.

907
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 1: This creature does boast a lung and gil combo existing

908
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 1: as a sort of call back to the three seventy

909
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 1: five million year old evolution of landwell and creatures from

910
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 1: a long extrict species of lobe thin fish. But it

911
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: still doesn't give us quite the recipe for a gill

912
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 1: man that we would we would like. Yeah, there are

913
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 1: a lot of problems I can see here for a

914
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:37,240
Speaker 1: humanoid evolving in the water itself, I mean bipedality, whatever

915
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,359
Speaker 1: you want to think about it, like, even if you're

916
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:43,400
Speaker 1: still attracted to the aquatic a hypothesis, um, which I

917
00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:46,000
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think you should be. But even if you're

918
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,360
Speaker 1: attracted to that, it says bipedality was sort of a

919
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 1: transitionary feature, right, It was a product of wading in

920
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:56,719
Speaker 1: maybe deep water, but not totally deep water, not like

921
00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:01,280
Speaker 1: water deeper than you could stand in. And so having

922
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 1: like a bipedality and legs is not really useful if

923
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 1: you are a fully aquatic creature, you would eventually lose them.

924
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: It would be much better to have fins, right, Well,

925
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:14,400
Speaker 1: I get The only case I can see to be

926
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 1: made here is that the creature from the Black Lagoon

927
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:21,360
Speaker 1: must come out of the lagoon to acquire prey and

928
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: of course women. But but you know it, it is

929
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 1: it is not an obligate um marine creature. It is

930
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: a creature that that that must come out of the

931
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: water to prey, a creature that is perhaps in the

932
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,920
Speaker 1: process of becoming a land creature. So yeah, almost anything

933
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,799
Speaker 1: you could think of as a humanoid in shape at

934
00:53:41,840 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: all would really need to be semi aquatic, right. It

935
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: would need to be at least or mostly aquatic. It

936
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:51,880
Speaker 1: would need to have some reason to come out of

937
00:53:51,920 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 1: the water if it was going to have legs like

938
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 1: human legs, because legs are made for for fighting gravity.

939
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:01,840
Speaker 1: Legs are not made for swimming around in a you know,

940
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: in a buoyancy situation. That's true. And if you don't

941
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: have a switch to magically turn your fins in defeat,

942
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 1: then you're probably out of luck. Yeah. So I think

943
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: if there were an aquatic humanoid, it would more likely

944
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:17,920
Speaker 1: be a mermaid with a fish butt than a humanoid

945
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,239
Speaker 1: like the gill man with legs, I think. So. I

946
00:54:21,320 --> 00:54:24,680
Speaker 1: think that makes the most sense. In fact, since they

947
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 1: spend most of their time under the water, even if

948
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:28,279
Speaker 1: they did come out of the water, what I guess

949
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 1: is that would be a mermaid with a fish butt

950
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: that would crawl around with its upper arms. Yeah, and

951
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 1: we do see that model sometimes the what is it

952
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:38,399
Speaker 1: the Cabin in the Woods movie? Oh yeah, I had

953
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:42,760
Speaker 1: a had a Merman creature that comes comes crawling across

954
00:54:42,840 --> 00:54:46,680
Speaker 1: the floor after its victims. Here's another question, though, how

955
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: do you think if there were such a thing as

956
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 1: an aquatic humanoid, how would tool use evolve differently at

957
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean. Oh yeah, that brings us

958
00:54:58,200 --> 00:55:00,440
Speaker 1: back to some some discussions with out in the past,

959
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: particularly as it pertains to the use of fire technology

960
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 1: and the idea of any technology existing without fire. Um.

961
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: I mean I keep coming back to. I guess it

962
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: would a lot of it would have to be sort

963
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: of biologically based, you know, I mean you could would

964
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:18,320
Speaker 1: it would it could not be fire based because you

965
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:21,279
Speaker 1: you cannot really have fire under water. I mean, you

966
00:55:21,360 --> 00:55:24,040
Speaker 1: see some things that get kind of classified as rudimentary

967
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: tool use by by like octopuses right where they I mean,

968
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't tool use, but the idea of like

969
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: pulling a rock over the entrance of their dwellings they

970
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: can cover it up and protect themselves. That that's interesting behavior. Yeah,

971
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:41,760
Speaker 1: I mean that's the use of I believe the distinction

972
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:43,920
Speaker 1: is that's a nature fact, that is taking something in

973
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 1: nature and using it for purpose. Now and then you

974
00:55:47,719 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 1: could say, well, I can imagine an underwater humanoid making

975
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:55,160
Speaker 1: an artifact, taking something and sharpening it into a skewer

976
00:55:55,640 --> 00:55:58,239
Speaker 1: or shaping it to better protect them, so that that

977
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 1: level of technology I could I see. I mean one

978
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 1: thing though, is that under the water, both the resistance

979
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,720
Speaker 1: density of the water and the buoyancy effects all would

980
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:12,439
Speaker 1: kind of mitigate against some of the benefits you get

981
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:15,719
Speaker 1: from say stone tools are our most basic tools are

982
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:21,640
Speaker 1: very often things that are designed to maximize kinetic energy delivery, right,

983
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:24,240
Speaker 1: So it would be something that you could throw really

984
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:27,239
Speaker 1: hard and hit something and kill it, or something that

985
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:29,560
Speaker 1: you could hit another thing with and break it, and

986
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:33,520
Speaker 1: kind of a gravity assisted swinging motion, all of which

987
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:35,360
Speaker 1: is a little bit harder to do underwater because you

988
00:56:35,360 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: can't swing as fast underwater do the resistance of the water.

989
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I wonder if you could

990
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:45,960
Speaker 1: have a tool using creature evolve under the water. Well,

991
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 1: more than more than likely you have to depend upon

992
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:53,120
Speaker 1: them originally being an alien species crash landed in the water. Um. Yeah,

993
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:56,279
Speaker 1: this is reminding me a lot of the the old

994
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:59,040
Speaker 1: nautical maps which were on which you had mermaids and

995
00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: sea monsters, but also all of these different hybrids. Sea lion,

996
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:04,839
Speaker 1: a sea lion that is not like our sea lion,

997
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:08,320
Speaker 1: but an actual lion with a fish uh portion to

998
00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:10,600
Speaker 1: its body. And a lot of this was based on

999
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: the idea that the ocean contains a parallel version of

1000
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: everything that we have on the surface and it and

1001
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:21,440
Speaker 1: you can extrapolate that to include not only the animals

1002
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:23,919
Speaker 1: but the resources, and say so you end up falling

1003
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:26,680
Speaker 1: into the trap of thinking, well, the underwater creatures they

1004
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:29,640
Speaker 1: would have their own minerals somehow, they would somehow, you know,

1005
00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:33,000
Speaker 1: smelt them and and craft them into weapons. Without really

1006
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: thinking about it. That the the the aquatic world is,

1007
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:38,960
Speaker 1: it's a part of our world, but is a very different,

1008
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:42,000
Speaker 1: very alien environment compared to the surface. Yeah, it's not

1009
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:45,320
Speaker 1: exactly the mirror world. It's more through a glass darkly

1010
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: all right. So there you have it. Uh. In these

1011
00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:50,640
Speaker 1: two episodes, I hope we've we've given everybody a lot

1012
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: of fresh perspective to consider not only the evolution of

1013
00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:00,120
Speaker 1: humans maybe, but but also just our our myths, our

1014
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:05,000
Speaker 1: fictions regarding underwater people and underwater hybrids. And of course,

1015
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:07,120
Speaker 1: we want to hear back from everybody concerning their favorite

1016
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 1: uh underwater humanoids in myth in UH in literature and cinema.

1017
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 1: What's your favorite nine Underwater Peril movie? Totally? I know

1018
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:19,760
Speaker 1: we've got some deep Star six partisans out there. Yeah,

1019
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: I think people get attacked. What is it a killer

1020
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: clam or something in that movie? It's I haven't rewatched

1021
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 1: it yet, um, but it's some sort of an underwater

1022
00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:31,320
Speaker 1: critter yeah. Um. Oh. And also Mermaid movies? What's your

1023
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:33,760
Speaker 1: favorite did you like? Did you grow up like me

1024
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:37,640
Speaker 1: watching Splash on VHS over and over again? I didn't

1025
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:40,120
Speaker 1: know that about you, Rob. Yeah, it's a solid mermaid

1026
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: romantic comedy. Okay, I'll have to check it out. Yeah, yeah,

1027
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks, Darryl Hannah, John Candy, tremendous. Did they ever

1028
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 1: do a Jetson's Meet the Flintstones kind of thing with

1029
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:56,120
Speaker 1: Leviathan and Splash with Leviathan? Oh? You mean did Leviathan

1030
00:58:56,160 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 1: meat Splash movie? I don't think it exists, or at

1031
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:04,040
Speaker 1: least not yet. Movie executives, high powered industry players out there,

1032
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:08,400
Speaker 1: if you're listening, take note. Yes, opportunity knocks, all right, Hey,

1033
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: In the meantime, check out stuff to Blow your Mind

1034
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: dot com. That is where you will find all of

1035
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 1: our podcast episodes. You'll find blog posts and other material

1036
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 1: as well. Links out to our social media accounts will

1037
00:59:18,960 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 1: be found on that page. Also, so we're talking about Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram,

1038
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:27,400
Speaker 1: We're on all those things. Follow us where you will,

1039
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:31,720
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams

1040
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:33,560
Speaker 1: and Torry Harrison. And if you want to get in

1041
00:59:33,680 --> 00:59:36,760
Speaker 1: touch with us directly to let us know feedback about

1042
00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: this episode or any other let us know topics you

1043
00:59:38,960 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 1: might want us to cover in the future. Uh to

1044
00:59:41,720 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: ramble on and on about nine underwater movies. You can

1045
00:59:45,280 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works

1046
00:59:48,720 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 1: dot com for more on and thousands of other topics

1047
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: because it how stuff works dot com.